


Through the Iron Gates

by Nibelung



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 09:23:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16616285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nibelung/pseuds/Nibelung
Summary: After the Lutecca Rebellion, the grip of the Hegemony on Local Space is weakened. But its fists can still draw blood, as Lady Zena Voyrbach learns.Sequel to my earlier story, Tales Writ in Blood.





	Through the Iron Gates

They drilled into her skull. Into her _fucking skull_. Shaved the side of her head and put a cranial port in and everything.

Not that it helped them much. She’d been too well trained in the art of mental blocking by her parents for that to work. It was stupidly painful, however.

When that failed, they’d tried… other means.

Mental blocks could be very useful for things you wanted to forget.

_(don’t think about it don’t think about it that ache between your legs doesn’t mean anything)_

That didn’t work either. Nor did good old-fashioned torture.

And it wouldn’t have helped them anyway. Zera didn’t know herself what the details were of the stolen shield codes she’d received for the Hegemony Shipyards. All that stuff had been included on the drive she’d given to sturdy old Captain Blackhorn, a man so full of cybot prosthetics he didn’t even register as an organic sapient on scanners anymore. Since her Hegemonic captors hadn’t boasted to her of Blackhorn’s capture or death, they couldn’t have found him yet; they might want to shatter her hopes, but they were very unimaginative.

By now Blackhorn might even be back at the headquarters of the League of Independent Worlds. He might have given them the codes they needed to strike a decisive blow at the Hegemony, continuing the work begun with the rebellion on Lutecca.

And Lady Zera Voyrbach?

A regrettable casualty of war, no doubt.

Zera figured her jailors would eventually decide she was too much trouble and not enough use to keep around. She wondered how much warning they would give her, and what the method would be: gas, electrocution, firing squad?

Public beheading?

Sure. As long as the Hegemony could explain where Zera of House Voyrbach had gotten a broken nose and a cranial port, and what happened to half her teeth.

_(the pliers don’t think about the pliers they weren’t real)_

During the last beating an armored fist had landed on her left eye, and she’d seen a kaleidoscope of colour. She hadn’t been able to open the eye since. Probably blind now.

Another thing not to think about.

The mag-rays in her cell held her upside-down, three feet above floor level.

She imagined what she’d look like, in the impossible scenario that someone from the League actually broke into remote, god-forsaken Ironspire Station to rescue her.

A fifteen-year-old girl, floating upside-down, blonde hair cascading floorward on the left side of her head, the right side shaved with a cranial port freshly put in. One eye swollen and probably turned to jelly; a broken nose; teeth that would suit a monster in a horror vidbox.

To top it off, she was wearing nothing but an orange prisoner tunic. The damn thing was sleeveless and ridiculously short; its open sides were secured by cords at navel height. But hanging upside down as she was, its front and back flaps were pulled over and downward by gravity. Anyone walking in would have an exquisite eye-level view of her naked from the waist down.

She wasn’t entirely sure that was a bad thing.


End file.
